It’s pretty obvious. First the ongoing store resets/remodeling, the Neighborhood Market Expansion pattern, then the Walmart Express closings.
They are abandoning their working class rural customer base, and trying to move “upmarket” into the lower portion of what was called the “Yuppie” market when I was younger. Nice suburban moms.
Will it work?
Who Knows.
The Economist noted Walmart’s share of US Retail sales peaked at “almost” 12% in 2009, and is now at 10.6% (Editorial, June 6, page 14). This is presumably absolute numbers, and represents the continuing erosion of working class purchasing power and pay in absolute terms.
So the solution is to move upmarket, and abandon their traditional customers.
During the recent 2016 Annual Meeting, the local news media had multiple stories about their logistics network, and emphasis on eCommerce growth. Like I want to use drive thru to pick up my $15 worth of weekly groceries. But then, they don’t care about sales to chumps like me, they want to complete with Amazon for the big ticket sales to the busy Urban Professionals, presumably the target market for Grocery Pickup here in Bentonville.
Walmart have economically strip mined rural America, shifting their own customers jobs to China, destroying the main street local economic activity that used to support local consumption. Walmart now plans to conquer the Suburbs just as many of those jobs are poised to be off shored and automated. And be a major force in eCommerce.
Walmart’s online shopping platform is still not as smooth as Amazon, and is increasingly cluttered with redundant offerings from third party sellers. I purchased a cheap tablet this spring, and found the listings for a “cover” by (redundant) Chinese offerings in multiple colors. I gave up after going through multiple pages, and the search engine would not allow me to filter them out. But those are trivial, surface annoyances.
The real issue is Walmart's interest in selling to upper tier customers. The “Walmart Express” closings represent abandonment of Eastern Benton county, creating a retail vacuum. Not quite a Food Desert, Dollar General still has a vigorous presence there, and they are now selling the empty stores to local grocery chains (More local news coverage). But Walmart doesn’t find it worthwhile to pursue those customers, who probably are NOT going to drive into Bentonville to pick up their month’s worth of groceries when their food stamps come it.
American Elites are willing to write off some percentage of the population, and condemn them to absolute impoverishment.
Their are recent books about the cycle of Evictions and people “getting by” on less than $2 a day, Walmart is merely implementing this policy.